


The Way You Look Tonight

by hopeless_eccentric



Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Dancing, Domestic Fluff, F/F, Femslash February, Femslash February 2021, Flirting, Fluff, Heist, Let Vespa Wear Jumpsuits 2k21, Married Couple, THEYRE SMITTEN, but with your WIFE, domestic fluff but in a heist way, im a giant lesbian, let buddy and vespa be cute on heists dammit, theyre MARRIED DAMMIT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-05
Updated: 2021-02-05
Packaged: 2021-03-16 16:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,826
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29210379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hopeless_eccentric/pseuds/hopeless_eccentric
Summary: Vespa’s job was to lean against the wall at the back of the ballroom, look bored, and make sure nobody saw her slipping a certain diamond necklace into the pocket of her jumpsuit. It should’ve been an easy job, one she was suited to just as well as Buddy was suited to sweet talking an hour of conversation from the lips of an heiress. However, if Buddy was anything, she was distracting, and as such, she was making Vespa’s instructions to look uninterested in anything at the party incredibly difficult.
Relationships: Buddy Aurinko/Vespa Ilkay
Comments: 18
Kudos: 43
Collections: The Penumbra Podcast Femslash February 2021!





	The Way You Look Tonight

**Author's Note:**

> hey all!! this one's light, no content warnings i could find! stay safe, drink water, and celebrate femslash February HELL YEAH also sorry for the brief hiatus ive been doing a lot of work on a bangfic so keep your eyes peeled for that in the future! idk when i need to check the deadline but im preemtively plugging it now

Buddy Aurinko’s role for the heist was to be a distraction. Vespa couldn’t think of a single person better suited to that role.

Sure, Ransom could coax a few billion creds out of the top of a debutante’s ball gown and Sikuliaq could clear a hall in a second if he raised his voice, but no other member of the crew of the Carte Blanche was so perfectly, elegantly distracting as she.

Vespa’s job was to lean against the wall at the back of the ballroom, look bored, and make sure nobody saw her slipping a certain diamond necklace into the pocket of her jumpsuit. It should’ve been an easy job, one she was suited to just as well as Buddy was suited to sweet talking an hour of conversation from the lips of an heiress. However, if Buddy was anything, she was distracting, and as such, she was making Vespa’s instructions to look uninterested in anything at the party incredibly difficult.

“Oh, Madame LeBlanc, you are just too much,” Buddy chuckled behind a hand that shimmered half as bright as she did, her many rings glittering like stars paling in comparison to the blazing of the sun.

She launched off on one story or another. It was almost certainly fake. Vespa knew because she had heard it murmured into the ears of socialites for years and years worth of heists. Buddy had told it again and again because it made Vespa laugh a little too hard just to know that Buddy and Vespa, Vespa and Buddy, always stuck to the same old tricks as always.

There was something nice in hearing it again, sliding easily off her silver tongue without a second thought.

Vespa couldn’t quite name the sensation that bloomed in her chest at the realization that some old joke of theirs had lived for long enough to become a staple in both of their tactics, even after years apart. Sublime wasn’t quite the right word, because even though Buddy wore divinity in a way that would make any who crossed her path shudder, she wore it in a distinctly human manner that made it all the more stunning. It was one thing to compare one’s beloved to a goddess. It was another thing entirely to see her smile and almost believe it.

Vespa tried her best to run through her list of objectives, check her watch, name three things she could see and hear and smell just to keep her on her toes. However, Buddy smiled again across the room, turning to the mark with the warm face of the sun blessing life upon the planets. Vespa could have sworn her heart stopped.

She’d seen enough streams to know that, if movie writers had their way, she should be fuming and jealous, perhaps enacting some kind of private vengeance on Buddy’s object of affection later. Frankly, Vespa didn’t see the point.

First of all, she wasn’t an asshole who didn’t trust her wife. Second of all, she wasn’t an asshole who made anything personal with a mark. 

Third of all, there was something different in the way Buddy smiled at her. If Vespa hadn’t spent the last few decades of her life trying to hold that smile in her mind’s eye until it blinded her, she would have missed it altogether. Vespa couldn’t quite place the difference between that smile and the one Buddy presented to the mark. If she had to guess, it had something to do with the crinkles around her eye and the curve of her lips and the way she turned away to fix her hair, rather than pressing bobby pins into Vespa’s hands and trusting her to love her with or without her hair in place.

When Buddy waved her farewells to the mark and began to stroll her way past the dance floor and over to Vespa’s side, Vespa jumped, immediately cursing herself for letting her mind wander during what very well could have been her only chance to steal the necklace.

“It’s not every evening I run into such an attractive stranger,” Buddy greeted with the grin Vespa had long since memorized, as much as an act of adoration as a means for survival.

“Nice to meet you too, Bud,” Vespa chuckled. “How’s the Madame?”

“Terribly boring, I’ll have to admit,” Buddy murmured, barely holding back a laugh.

Vespa mourned that hidden laugh for a moment, knowing it would have sounded like wedding bells and starting engines and synthetic sunrises over a million happy tomorrows. She promised herself she’d hear it again, just as she had when dragging herself through the Martian desert for years. That promise was feeling more and more like a given with every day.

“Did I miss my chance?” Vespa leaned closer to hiss. 

Buddy laughed as if she had told a rather personal joke, faux-swatting at her shoulder with a hand Vespa had just realized still bore her wedding band. Usually, Buddy would remove any usual jewelry for a heist, but she supposed Buddy had made an excuse for herself with a dozen different rings on the same hand. Even with guilt at potentially screwing up the heist building in her stomach, Vespa couldn’t keep the corner of her mouth from twitching.

“No, I expect I’ll spill my drink on her later tonight and use it as an excuse to tell her about how my mother-in-law attempted to do the same at my wedding, though I don’t doubt it was malicious,” Buddy chuckled.

“Still on about that mother-in-law, huh?” Vespa snorted. “Y’know, we’ve been talking about her for years, and I don’t think I’ve ever met the lady.”

“Of course, I think the Madame might have taken a fancy with me,” Buddy mused. “Perhaps I ought to call her my ex-mother-in-law. By death, of course. Something tragic.”

“Your eyes look just like hers used to,” Vespa suggested in a feigned wistful tone that was nearly an impression of Ransom’s casual adorations. “Something stupid like that.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t be seducing her instead,” Buddy joked. “You obviously have a talent for manipulative storytelling, darling.”

“But I don’t have an ex-mother-in-law who spilled wine on me one time,” Vespa snorted.

“Vespa,” Buddy shook her head, a laugh shaking on the edge of the name. The sound was almost sweeter than when Buddy venerated the two syllables into the top of Vespa’s head by night, for joy, whether brilliant as the sun or soft and flickering as a candle, looked better on none than Buddy Aurinko, “forgive me for this accusation, but I do believe you’ve gone slightly too far with your method acting.”

“I love you too, Bud.”

“And I love you, Vespa,” Buddy returned softly, hiding a squeeze of Vespa’s hand behind the circumference of her skirt.

“Say, how long do you think it’s gonna take this Madame lady to get bored of that guy she’s talking to now?”

Buddy shrugged.

“Minutes,” she returned. “I don’t doubt he’ll be bored of her first.”

“Long enough for a dance?”

“Vespa,” Buddy pretended to chide, “I’m supposed to be appearing single.”

“Yeah, and I’m supposed to be your dead wife with the same eyes as this lady. So what?” Vespa snorted. “I’ll call you something that reminds you of your dearly departed while we’re dancing, and you can go run off and ask the Madame to hold you in her big strong arms until you’re done weeping, I’ll steal the necklace, and then we can get the hell out of here.”

“I ought to let you strategize more often,” Buddy chuckled. “Though, I must say, if I truly wanted a certain lovely lady with well-muscled arms to hold me through an emotive fit—”

“Yeah, yeah, I get it, Steel’s a great hugger—”

“You, darling,” Buddy replied, barely holding in a much more untidy laugh that would have likely jeopardized the heist itself.

Vespa didn’t see why they shouldn’t get a chance to have a messy heist to themselves for once. If Ransom and Steel could pull it off all the time, she saw no reason she couldn’t get all dressed up and flirt with her wife over a stolen good or two.

“Well, can I have this dance then?” Vespa grinned. “You’ve got an ‘emotive fit’ to burst into.”

“And quite the emotive fit it will be,” Buddy beamed.

When Buddy took her arm, the whole world seemed to fall into place for just a moment. The axis of the universe might as well have been the place where their two palms met. Vespa didn’t have a thought to spare for it, for she was meeting Buddy’s gaze, as sweet when half-hidden away as it was when laid bare across the pillow at night.

The music ended, another song fading in just as Vespa’s hands fell into place and the steps fell into time with her legs. She didn’t say much, for she didn’t have much to say. The occasional glances and smiles and moments she shared with her wife were enough. 

Maybe they danced for one song. Maybe they danced for two or three. Vespa wasn’t really keeping count. Time didn’t seem to move right with Buddy Aurinko sharing a private kind of smile with her.

She knew that it would end eventually, so she made a point of treasuring every second of it, remembering the way she’d burned Buddy’s smile into her memory and how lucky she was that she didn’t need that particular snapshot now.

Maybe the room buzzed around them. Maybe the planet spun underneath. For all Vespa cared, the whirring arms of the galaxy turned in vain, because even with the swirling masses of the universe on full display from the windows all around, the only space she cared about was the space between the two of them, ebbing and flowing as the music gave Vespa an excuse, just for a moment, to hold her wife tight.

Eventually, Buddy leaned close and whispered in her ear.

“You ought to call me that terrible name, now,” she smiled. “Madame LeBlanc looks unoccupied.”

“I only get to say one thing to you?”

“I’d say that’s all you have time for,” Buddy hissed back.

“I love you, Bud. I think you can come up with your own pet name. I just wanted to tell you that,” she murmured back.

Of course, Buddy gasped and feigned her shock and went about the businesses of distracting the host. Vespa pocketed the necklace without a second thought.

These steps were the kind of beats of a heist that grew mundane with time. That didn’t make Vespa any less excited for every single one of them, for every inch between the necklace and her pocket and her feet and the door marked one less second until she could make it back to the ship and close the space between her and Buddy Aurinko without the pressure of a heist to dictate the terms.

**Author's Note:**

> HELL YEAH WOMEN
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading!! Make sure to SMASH that kudos button and leave a comment down below stay awesome gamers
> 
> Check me out on tumblr @hopeless-eccentric or on twitter @withane22 !!


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